Users access web applications on remote web servers. In one example, the web application allows users to purchase certain products or services online. However, the user may experience problems while conducting the online purchase. For example, the web application may crash every time the user selects an icon on a web page used for an online purchase. In another situation, the user may not be able to determine how to complete the online product purchase from the instructions displayed on the web page. In another situation, the web application may prevent the user from selecting particular items. In yet another situation, the web site may slow down or crash during certain periods of time or for particular operations. These are just a few of the many problems that may arise during an online network session.
These problems can negatively affect an e-commerce business. For example, a negative user experience during the online session may cause a potential customer to give up and abort the purchase of a particular product. Even worse, the potential customer may stop visiting the enterprise web site. Accordingly, it is important to be able to monitor user experiences during web sessions and identify any problems.
Systems currently exist for monitoring web sites. However, challenges exist in accurately replaying the previously captured web session. For example, web pages used today execute code that operates more independently from the web server and contain more state information. Monitoring systems may not be able to observe and capture all of the events from these rich web pages. These missed events can prevent accurate replay of the previously captured web session.